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by eppp 687 days ago
How cold would the pipe be in space if it was shaded? Wouldnt that cut the energy needed by a bit?
1 comments

It's more or less impossible to shade a space elevator because the (hot, radiant) earth spans a full hemisphere of its field of view and the sun wanders most of the opposite one.

No way to passively reach cryogenic temperatures—let alone the deep-cryogenic ones demanded by high current-density superconductors.